India scripts history, launches 104 satellites at one go

India scripts history, launches

 104 satellites at one go

Sriharikota : Scripting history, India on Wednesday, 15^th February 2017, successfully launched a record 104 satellites--all but three of them foreign--from here and put them into orbit in a single mission onboard its most dependable Polar rocket.

Recording its 38th consecutive success, ISRO's workhorse Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) injected India's weather observation Cartosat-2 Series satellite and 103 nano satellites into precise orbit in a gap of 30 minutes after a textbook lift-off from this spaceport, about 100 km from Chennai.

As the country seeks a bigger slice of the multi-billion dollar space launch industry, the Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO) bettered Russian space agency's feat of launching 37 satellites at one go in 2014. The previous highest number of satellites launched by ISRO in one mission was 20 in June 2015.

A majority of the satellites have earth-imaging capability while the Indian cartographic satellite is capable of taking high resolution images.

Celebrations erupted among scientists at the spaceport here when the ISRO chief announced that all the satellites had been put into orbit as planned.

"All 104 satellites successfully placed in orbit. My hearty congratulations to the entire ISRO team for the wonderful job they have done," a beaming ISRO Chairman A S Kirankumar said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi congratulated ISRO for the successful launch of 104 satellites, calling it a "renarkable feat".

"Congratulations to @isro for the successful launch of PSLV-C37 and CARTOSAT satellite together with 103 nano satellites!," the Prime Minister said in a tweet

"This remarkable feat by @isro is yet another proud moment for our space scientific community and the nation India salutes our scientists," he said.